Convict Help

[convictfisherman]

alright i have a 20 gallon tank and i want to purchase some convicts. the tank is cycled and all and i really want some convicts however i dont want the babies and my lfs wont take em. is there any way i could stop them from reproducing? or what would happen if i put two females or two males in would that work?

 

[Colin_T]

2 males will fight, 2 females will breed but not produce any fertile eggs, therefore no babies.

What about keeping a different type of cichlid that the shop will buy? Perhaps look at Cichlasoma sajica or spilurum, they are similar to convicts but not as common. You could also look at keeping Apistogrammas (A. cacatuoides are nice) and any shop will buy them. However, they don't look anything like a convict.

 

[Chiquita]

I would put two females in there. Put lots of hiding spots in there to combat aggression and you should be fine. But if you don’t want babies you can’t put two males and two females, they will breed. There is no way to stop them from reproducing, they breed like crazy.

 

[foley69]

why not get one male with a plec and some type of soaling fish like tiger barbs or neon blue rainbows

 

[shroob]

May sound abit cruel put if you get a pair, you could always remove the eggs when they lay them (thats if you can find them, if not its abit risky and you might wake up and see a cloud of fry). However this may lead to the problem of the male being ready to breed again but the female not, causing the male to beat on the female so maybe not an ideal situation.

 

[thomasp9021]

if you include a small plec a bn or bulldog it will eat the eggs before they hatch or even a shoal of tiger barbs whch will eat the fry before they can grow

 

[LDP]

I had a pair and the female beat the living cr*p out of everything in my heavily planted 240 liter tank including the male and destroyed the aquascape.

She was ok at first but after her eggs got eaten a couple o times she went psycho. Even took the eye from a syno 5 times her size. She then paired up with a male jade eye 3 times her size and together the they dominated the tank (this all happened in 1 night). I moved them into a different tank.

The male however was lovely and lived very well in the community tank, he developed a tuma a few months later and we had to put him to sleep. We were very sad to loose him.

If I go ahead with plans to start a 7 foot community I may well add a couple of male convicts but I wouldn't add a female because I think it's very distressing for the poor female to defend them in a community.

I would love to have a tank of convics they are lovely fish but they produce an awful lot of young and they are very hard to shift.
It just isn't prctical

There are other cichlids as Colin_T says and if they do breed you shouldn't have much trouble selling on the young.

How about Rams they are lvely to watch and full of character